V-1 of “foldable phones” is nothing but clumsy. But here’s the thing – folding smartphones are coming, there’s no doubt about that. Despite what the naysayers claim, I am of the view that the next pivot in phone technology is a smartphone that folds. I am betting on it for 2 reasons: The tech is almost here, going by the number of patents that almost every leading phone manufacturer, including Apple has filed, & from the angle of business compulsion. Survey after survey has shown that the smartphone market has flattened out. Manufacturers have tried it all – small phones, smart phones, big phones, double-screen phones, flip phones, 4-SIM card phones, super-expensive phones, cheap phones, OLED screens….All the operating systems, too, today wear the same (jaded) look. So what next? The Tablet market has gone south. The much-talked about “convergence” never happened, leaving consumers still struggling between their phones, PCs & smart TVs. But in all this, for computing convergence to happen eventually, the best bet still remains the smartphone. The ‘size versus compactness’ issue was something the manufacturers never got right. The device was either too small to be used for all your needs, or too big to be carried around in your hip pocket. Till now, the dawn of the era of flexible phones. Market saturation does not mean that smartphone manufacturers are going to fold (pun unintended). Instead, they need to create a new market. And that market is the folding smartphone one. Yes, the tech is nascent, but does anyone today remember the Motorola gigantic handset or Nokia’s banana phone? Pessimists argue that there’s no need for folding phones now. I would counter-argue, there is indeed a want. Folding phones invariably will unfurl into Tablet-sized mobile computing devices. With a physical keyboard, with more computing power that your average desktop may ever have. So here’s the deal: when this tech matures, you will have all of this in your palm – lightening fast computing power, a compact, easy-to-carry device that changes size whenever you want it to, with artificial intelligence-driven apps to boot. With 5G on the way, folding smartphones do have the potential to become that perfect computing, educative & entertainment piece of hardware that we’ve all longed for. No more watery eyes, no more stylus, no more fat fingers error. – Editor
All views, counter-views welcome.
